Angie Dickinson

Actor

Born: 30 September 1931

Birthplace: Kulm, North Dakota

Best known as: Star of the TV show Police Woman

Name at birth: Angeline Brown

Angie Dickinson specialized in playing smart, sexy, tough-minded women, and is most famous as Sgt. 'Pepper' Anderson in the TV series Police Woman (1974-78). Her best-known movie role may be one of her earliest: as the plucky dance hall dame Feathers in Rio Bravo (1959) with John Wayne and Dean Martin. Her other films include The Killers (1964, with Ronald Reagan in his last feature role), Thief (1971, not the 1981 James Caan film of the same name) and Pay It Forward (2000, with Helen Hunt). She played Frank Sinatra's estranged wife in the heist spoof Ocean's Eleven (1960) and had a cameo in the 2001 remake, which featured Julia Roberts in Dickinson's old role.

Extra credit: Dickinson married Gene Dickinson in 1952; they had no children and were divorced in 1960. She married composer Burt Bacharach in 1965; they divorced in 1980. They had one daughter, Nikki Bacharach, born in 1966, who suffered from a form of autism known as Asperger's Syndrome. Nikki died on 4 January 2007; a spokeswoman for Dickinson and Bacharach told reporters that that Nikki had "quietly and peacefully committed suicide to escape the ravages to her brain brought on by Asperger's."